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Friday, February 01, 2013

More Guilt and Some Transitions

Grooving, on a Friday morning

I'm in one of those stretches where I worry that "Mommy Guilt" is raising 'Rado more than I am. It's ironic since I was home to put him to bed every night this week. But it's there - that feeling that I'm not saying "No" as much as I should, that I'm raising the kind of Starbucks customer who all the baristas cringe at when he walks in the door and who unknowingly gets a loogie splashed in his latte, and that I'm not reading/playing/hanging out/(insert action here) as much as I should. Then I think, What is this should crap? It seems like the shoulds are the mortal enemies of self-esteem. If I should have done x or y and I did, well, aren't I just stellar? But if I should have done x or y and I didn't, let the mental flagellation begin. Lame. But that often is how it is. Let's not let the shoulds win whether we did what we should have or not. Whatever I did, whatever is, that's what wins, and it's time to either be ok with that or change it. With Connor in the picture I think so much of what I may regret if I let the shoulds pile up. Unlike the kid who gets the huge tattoo of a tiger jumping through a firey hoop on his leg for his eighteenth birthday, no regrets!

We have started to transition 'Rado away from the bottle to the open-top cup. I figure that if we're traveling or on the move his regular bottle will suffice, but if we're sitting down to eat he might as well know how to handle a big-boy cup. He's doing pretty well with it, I'm happy to say. Two days and a small mound of water- and milk-soaked burpies later he still seems excited about it and giggles whenever he sees the liquid coming down the pipeline. We're holding the cup steady for him, but that doesn't stop him from drinking. At dinner tonight he drank water out of his regular bottle, milk out of his little blue plastic cup, and water from Z's and my glass. The one downside to this transition is that it opens him up for a lot more pointing and grunting. He seems to be heading towards the terrible twos anyway, so maybe he's transitioning us more than we're transitioning him.